RichardGibbons

It's because you're misdiagnosing the disease. You have a politician who is moving the USA away from freedom, rule of law, free markets, equal rights for all, three branches of government, and closer to a dictatorship. If you actually believe that the USA has been successful because of these American values, then hoping for bad shit is pretty reasonable. Bad shit is the best of the potential outcomes, because it will educate the populace on why freedom and rule of law are important, and lead to a higher chance of maintaining the properties that have made America great. The other factor influencing discussion on this particular board is that it's pretty clear that Trump wants to fuck over the rest of the world, and this board has a fair number of non-Americans. It shouldn't be surprising that the rest of the world doesn't want to get fucked over, and cheers against the person trying to fuck them. People will get along and prosper together much more when one party doesn't decide to fuck them over (e.g. the USA/Canada relationship for 100 years up until about 1 months ago.)

I agree with you that it makes sense to consider 20 the average, and I'd say that 15 is more like a low. It's been 40 years since the PE spent significant chunks of time under a 15 PE, and after 40 years, it's reasonable to say that there's been a change.

The end game is, at worst, the election of a Democratic majority to the Senate and Congress after the massive crushing of American standards of living.

I'm curious why you think this. My guess would be that immigrants work harder, but are less productive than existing citizens. My reasoning would be that the USA has a decent education system--making the population more productive--and many of the really low productivity jobs seem to be done by immigrants. Is your logic that the highly educated immigrants (e.g. doctors, silicon valley types, etc) and medium education immigrants (e.g. tradespeople) are just so much more hard working than citizens that they more than balance out the low-productivity immigrant workers?

Still not getting what is interesting here. They're talking about destroying preferential tax treatment for Democratic charities while maintaining preferential tax treatment for Republican charities. Is it actually interesting that if you dramatically tilt the entire tax system toward the Republicans and away from the Democrats, then it favors the Republicans? Or that the Democrats will say it favours the Republicans? Would it be equally interesting if they destroyed preferential tax treatment for Republican charities and found that favored the Democrats? Or you'd find it interesting if, upon this happening, the Republicans said, "hey, this favors the Democrats." Just really confused why anyone would find this interesting.

Could be a good slogan: LPC -- flipping cars into ditches since 2015! I wish we had a party I could vote for that knew how to drive....

Cubs, this is one that we really deserve sympathy for. I remember a couple months ago, you incorrectly wanted to give Trump credit for Trudeau's resignation, but now there is a big change in Canadian politics for which I think Trump deserves the credit. For over a year, the Conservative party was on track to win possibly the biggest majority in history, and the Liberal party had a chance of not even being a top-3 party. In the last couple of months, that's reversed, and it now looks like the Liberals are about to win an election in the next few months. It's the fastest shift in Canadian polls that I've ever seen. So, think this is the one Canadians really deserve you sympathy for, and Trump deserves credit for.

Yep. At this point, the USA has blown up any credibility in making long-term deals. There's no value in a contract when one side can ignore the terms of the contract whenever it chooses. The only deal that can be made with the USA is one where the benefits are received upfront. Anything with any potential long-term negative consequences shouldn't be signed, and I think most world leaders are smart enough to recognize that.

Maybe you just haven't actually realized that something has changed. Here's some fun graffiti in Canada's most Conservative, pro-Trump province.

Funny, I did MGM too, but leap calls.

My calculation was to take the amount of money I needed to maintain the lifestyle I wanted indefinitely, and then be willing to spend any additional on a place to live. In practice, that meant 38% of my net worth in the house back in 2019, and 25% now. It was non-optimal from a "maximize money" strategy, but a win from a "optimize life" strategy.

This seems to be how most of the world views the discussion.

At this point, it seems pretty clear that Zelensky "won" the negotiations with Trump. Trump didn't get the minerals he wanted, looked weak and foolish, and clearly isn't someone who knows how to ink a deal. Zelensky displayed strong leadership in the face of silly attacks, brought the free world onto his side, and is now getting resources from Europe. The democratic world looks to be coming together behind Ukraine. It's actually hard to think of how that meeting could've realistically had a better outcome for Ukraine.

Simply asserting this doesn't make it true. Hitler started with Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland. Russia started with Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine. Putin doesn't strike me as a fellow who will permanently agree to peace for our time when there are weaker countries to plunder.

It's not at all clear to me that Zelensky failed, because it's not clear to me that that was his "ONE" job. The situation is this: The USA was an ally, but is aligned with Russia now. Trump wants to plunder Ukraine's resources during a time of crisis, without offering any security benefits to Ukraine. Even if Trump did offer security benefits, Trump doesn't follow through on his deals. The only sensible deal to make with Trump is one where you get all the benefits up front. He'll renege on any other deal whenever he feels it might benefit him. Given this, the optimal strategy isn't to "secure US support", because there's no such thing if you're trying to make a long-term deal with Trump. Rather, the optimal strategy is to rebuild a new democratic alliance with the rest of the world. To do this, he could: Demonstrate to the world the degree of venality he's dealing with in the USA to rouse the emotions of non-Americans. Make every other country on the planet consider whether they could be in Ukraine's shoes, and realize that the USA would respond the same way. Make it 100% clear to Europe that the USA is not going to help Ukraine anymore. Make it extremely clear that the USA is not in the freedom and democracy business anymore. Force a viable democratic alternative to crystallize around other countries. The meeting accomplished numbers 1-4, and the only question is whether #5 will be the outcome. And, if you think Trump is playing 4-D chess, this is roughly what he claims to want too--other nations stepping up for defence, and a return to American splendid isolation combined with imperialist expansion. So, it's quite possible that this was a win-win for both Zelensky and Trump.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. This is pretty standard Trudeau virtue signalling, and it seems reasonable to me that you're interpreting it the way you are. Thanks!

I've certainly forgotten this--I loathe Trudeau, but don't remember him making insults and threats the the USA. Could you give me a reference, please? Thanks!

Respectfully, your point is nonsensical, because math matters. A covered call is equivalent to a naked put barring unexpected things like interest rate or dividend changes (which could benefit the covered call side or the naked put side.) If you sell the naked put, you effectively get the dividend, not forgo it. It's about 10 seconds more difficult to convert a long stock position to a naked put than converting it to a covered call. (Or zero effort, if you have a computer do it automatically, which you do, if there were actually money to be made doing it.) That said, at this point, pretty well everyone understands their own thoughts. So I'll just say that I'm delighted you've found a simple innovative strategy that generates above market returns for you! I don't think it's something I'll copy, but I'm glad that you're able to do it successfully.

The degree of analytic rigour in 73 Red's analysis is pretty clear when when he says that the economic outcome from covered calls is different than short puts. Really, I think anyone who's spent a year or two working with options will understand the issues with his argument, and a this point, those who are new to options should have serious concerns about his credibility on this subject.

Conservatives are much more likely to build pipelines than the Liberals, though the Liberals might talk about it these days. It's somewhat unlikely to me that a major pipeline in Canada could be built. It's very unlikely to me that a major pipeline in Canada could be built in under a decade. (My over/under would be 15 years.)

The article is accurate, except this line is a mischaracterization: She didn't say that Trudeau was ill-prepared for a trade war. She said the actions that he was taking at that moment [giving $250 to most people in Canada and temporarily putting a federal sales tax on hold] were just a gimmick to win votes for the Liberals in the short term while hurting the country's long-term ability to respond to a trade war. It matters because the Liberals have more than doubled the Canadian debt, a lot of it while Freeland was Minister of Finance. A reasoned take would be that the $600B of debt the Trudeau government added is primarily responsible for Canada's limited ability to respond, not the $6B on top of that from the $250 and GST pause.

There has been a massive bounce for Trudeau's party--I can't remember such a big swing in polls in a short time. Before January 20, the more "pro-oil development" party, the Conservatives, was looking like it would get the largest win in decades. Now, there's been a massive resurgence of the incumbent Liberal party, to the extent that I now believe that there's a good chance the Conservatives won't win a majority. (And a weak minority Conservative win is likely a return to what Canada has now--a left-wing Liberal/NDP alliance that isn't supportive of oil development.)

The funny thing about this chart is that it seems to detract from your "overvalued market" thesis rather than supporting it. Like, it basically says the market's valuation is average, except for tech and financials. And tech, considering its size, is growing insanely quickly with super-high margins right when the world gets transformed by the creation of AI. In fact, it feels like it undersells the positive impact of AI on non-tech companies, if they're only trading at average valuations. So it suggest that the broader market is average to cheap.

For sure--it's pretty obvious that everyone loses from trade wars. Pity that we're in a trade war where everyone has to lose.

I think the other obvious one is potash. The USA mines 400 tonnes, and consumes about about 6000 tonnes, 77% of which is imported from Canada. Potash is quite important if you want to grow food. Farmers would be hit first, and many of them are in red states. Then I imagine there would be significant inflation in the cost of food.